


The Interconnectedness of Songs on the Radio

by sharkhette



Category: Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (TV 2016)
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst and Humor, Coming Out, F/F, Fade to Black, Kissing, M/M, POV Multiple, Post-Season/Series 02, Project Blackwing (Dirk Gently), Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-04
Updated: 2018-02-04
Packaged: 2019-03-13 15:21:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13573365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkhette/pseuds/sharkhette
Summary: Life goes on after Wendimoor. Dirk and Todd live together in the agency office and don't talk about what happened under the love spell. Bart thinks about murder, and also about fixing the universe, and how the two are connected.“I figure, stuff started to go wrong when I tried to kill you, so you’re the starting point,” Bart explained. “I backtracked back to you, and now I’ll choose a different path, and stuff will make sense again. I’ll kill the people I’m supposed to kill, and I won’t try to kill the ones I’m not, and the universe will stop being broken. Okay?”





	The Interconnectedness of Songs on the Radio

Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency’s most recent case involved a labyrinth of secret underground tunnels, an unusually intelligent capybara, and a truly unreasonable amount of maple syrup, but its lack of time travel or alternate universes made it a walk in the park compared to their previous adventures. Also, no one was electrocuted, shot, or otherwise maimed, for which Todd was grateful. He was a fan of not being maimed; the pararibulitis took care of that well enough on its own, and now that he was out of Wendimoor, he was back to relying on the meds instead of Amanda’s mind-over-matter approach. He wasn’t sure which one he preferred. The meds were convenient (especially now that he wasn’t on the run), but expensive. Either way, his attacks still sent Dirk into a panic that was almost as painful to watch as the hallucinations were to feel, and Todd would appreciate never having to experience either ever again.

He pushed into the office, holding the door for Dirk, and dropped his keys on the table. He still wasn’t used to seeing the big plaque on the wall, all shiny and professional looking, and he knew Dirk was still reveling in it.

“A job well done,” Dirk said, smiling brightly as he flopped onto the sofa, kicking his feet up against the far arm.

“It was good,” Todd agreed. No one had died, and the capybara had successfully eluded the cops and escaped back into the wild to live its best life. “So when do we get paid?”

“You know what I said about—”

“The universe rewarding us in its own time.” Todd sighed. Farah might be backing the agency, but he’d feel better with a little cash in his pocket. It was fine. “Right. Cup noodles for dinner again?”

“Oh, don’t look so resigned. Cup noodles are perfectly good. Anyway, we’ve got all this syrup now! Maple syrup is expensive, you know, and now we’ll never have to buy any ever again.”

“How much maple syrup do you think I normally buy? Don’t answer that. Can we sell it?”

Before Dirk could reply, the door slammed open and Bart, resplendent in all her dirt-caked glory, slunk over the office threshold, a chainsaw in her hand. Todd, though getting increasingly desensitized to most weirdness just by staying in proximity to Dirk, nearly had a heart attack, and Dirk yelped and scrambled over the back of the couch and across the room to dive under the desk.

“Hi Dirk,” Bart said.

“Why are you still following me?” Dirk demanded. 

“I got questions. Thought you could answer them. Hi, Todd.”

Todd, for lack of a better option, waved. The chainsaw looked very well used. He wasn’t sure if it was dirt or blood drying on the blade, and he didn’t want to get close enough to find out. He edged further back into the office, angling for Dirk.

“I can very rarely answer any kind of question about anything,” Dirk said, speaking very quickly, “and leave Todd alone.”

“You still mad about that time I tried to shoot you? I thought we were over that.”

“No, I don’t think I’m ever going to be over that, if it’s all the same to you.”

“Well, I’m not trying to shoot you now, so come out and talk.”

“I’m fine down here, thanks.”

“Where’s your friend?” Todd interrupted. “Your—not-assistant, from Blackwing. Ken?”

Bart chewed on her bottom lip as her gaze turned sullen and she looked away. “Not here. Nobody talks to me anymore.”

“Because you kill them before they get the chance, I assume,” Dirk said.

“I’m a holistic assassin, you know that. Now get outta there and tell me about the universe and stuff.”

Dirk poked his nose out from his desk fortress. “The universe?”

Bart shrugged and waved the chainsaw around in a vague gesture. Todd flinched back imperceptibly and wondered if he could fit under the desk with Dirk. 

“I figure, stuff started to go wrong when I tried to kill you, so you’re the starting point,” Bart explained. “I backtracked back to you, and now I’ll choose a different path, and stuff will make sense again. I’ll kill the people I’m supposed to kill, and I won’t try to kill the ones I’m not, and the universe will stop being broken. Okay?”

“You’re not going to kill us,” Todd clarified.

Bart narrowed her eyes. “I don’t really feel like it, but I probably could, maybe.”

“Please don’t,” Dirk said.

“Let’s focus on the part where the universe is broken,” Todd suggested. Most of what Bart had said just sounded like words, though not words that necessarily belonged together or made any kind of sense, but the universe being broken was probably important, and maybe up Dirk’s alley. Todd backed up to stand next to the desk and nudged Dirk with the toe of his shoe. “Right? Broken universe?”

“Right,” Dirk said. “Yes, I suppose it might be good to find out more about that.”

Bart waited, staring at them until Dirk finally sighed and crawled out from under the desk to stand next to Todd. Todd bumped their shoulders together in a silent show of encouragement, which Dirk seemed to appreciate, though it didn’t make Bart’s presence any less intimidating. They made their way to the couch, Todd sitting down first—tensely—until Dirk shuffled down to sit beside him, their shoulders and thighs pressed together, though there was the whole rest of the couch to choose from. Dirk was no less strange about personal space now than he had been when they first met, though it bothered Todd less. 

Bart remained standing, drumming her fingers over the chainsaw handle.

“The universe,” Dirk finally prompted, his hands on his knees, his knuckles a bit whiter than they would be normally.

“You know how it works?”

Dirk stared at her. She stared back. Todd looked back and forth between them. He could feel his eyebrows doing the worried thing.

“No,” Dirk finally said, as incredulously as Todd had ever heard him. “No, haven’t you been paying attention at all? I don’t know anything! About anything! I barely know how to get by in the day-to-day, let alone anything about the universe.”

“But you know about it being all connected.”

“I know that it is connected; I don’t know how, or why, or which bits connect to other bits until I’m tangled up in the middle of them, and even then it’s questionable.”

Bart was looking steadily less impressed. “You’re a holistic detective. You solve stuff no one else can.”

“Right.”

“You ever ignored the universe when it tried to point you to your next case?”

Dirk opened his mouth for a second before closing it again.

“Maybe once or twice,” Todd supplied.

Bart’s mouth twisted in something like a smile. “It’s not good. I kill whoever I feel like killing, and that’s what the universe wants. I fix things. But I was trying not to kill people lately, just to see if I could. Universe wasn’t happy about that. Everything got all—messy, and bad, and stuff. The wrong people died. Other people, they did stuff—my fault. Should’ve done what the universe wanted me to do.”

“You escaped Blackwing, though,” Todd said.

“Yeah, I got out. Not like they could keep me where I wasn’t supposed to be.”

“And are you supposed to be—here?” Dirk asked delicately.

Bart shrugged. “Maybe. Dunno. Nothing feels right anymore. I still gotta fix stuff. Get everything back on track like the universe wants.”

“What does the universe want, exactly?”

“I didn’t kill Ken. When I left Blackwing, I left him alive. Could’ve killed him. Didn’t want to. Or—I did want to, but I didn’t. I felt like I should, and it was a good idea, but I didn’t want…”

“You were friends,” Dirk supplied, leaning a little further into Todd. He was a warm line against Todd’s side, still tense, but solid.

“Yeah, before he went all evil and stuff.” Bart gnawed on her lip and crossed her arms, the chainsaw still dangling from one hand. She looked three parts annoyed and one part distraught. “I gotta go back there. If the universe is being all—not letting me get on with stuff, then I gotta go back and put things right, and if that means killing him, then I will.” She dropped her head in a short, definitive nod. “No messing up this time.”

“Did you kill Mr. Priest?” Dirk asked.

“No. He left before I got to him. Did you see him, though? His face is all—Panto got him with his scissors, sliced him right down the middle, and now he’s all taped back together like some kinda freak. Ha.” 

Dirk looked faintly horrified, though whether it was because of Priest’s injury or because Priest was still alive and out there waiting, Todd couldn’t say.

“And Friedkin?” Dirk asked.

“Who?”

“Hugo Friedkin, at Blackwing—he was there with us when we escaped with the Boy, back to Wendimoor. Ken stabbed him. Is he still alive?”

Bart looked at him blankly.

“You know,” Dirk said impatiently, “Friedkin, the trigger-happy idiot who hasn’t got a single functional brain cell between his ears? Ridiculously good looking, even more ridiculously eager to shoot people?”

“I don’t know him,” Bart said.

“You think he’s ridiculously good looking?” Todd asked.

“He’s practically a model, Todd. Miraculously, that did not make my time at Blackwing any more bearable.”

“That’s…too bad?”

“I don’t know whether I would have preferred being there with Ken in charge,” Dirk said thoughtfully. “He would have been terrifyingly competent, wouldn’t he?”

Bart shrugged. “Didn’t stay long enough to find out.”

“But you think killing him will fix everything?” Dirk asked.

“It’s what I do, and since you don’t have a better idea, it’s what I’m going to keep doing.”

“Are you saying it’s my fault you have to go kill a man?”

“No, I told you, it’s the universe.” She tapped the tip of the chainsaw’s blade against the floor. “You could come with me, though.”

“To Blackwing.”

She nodded, looking as hopeful as a holistic assassin who hadn’t bathed in a month could look.

“No offense, but I would literally rather set myself on fire,” Dirk said apologetically, and then froze up again. “Which is not an invitation for you to set me on fire, thank you.”

“I already told you, I’m not going to kill you. You sure you don’t want to come? It could be fun.”

“Going back to the place I hate most on Earth, for a murder spree.”

“Yeah! I’ll get a car, and we’ll see what happens on the way, and then when we’re done, things will be good again, like before.”

“Right, no, I really don’t think that’s quite—thank you, though, for the offer. Very generous. Very…um.”

She dropped her gaze to the chainsaw. “Fine. Just thought the company might be nice.”

“I’m afraid not,” Dirk said. “Best of luck, though. Killing people, and whatnot. I’m sorry your assistant didn’t work out. Not everyone can be Todd, I suppose.”

Bart grunted.

“Actually, I don’t think anyone can be Todd except for Todd,” Dirk continued. “Todd, do you think there could be more than one of you?”

“God, I hope not. I couldn’t take that much self-loathing.”

“Fair enough,” Dirk agreed. “And it would probably involve some sort of paradox, and that’s the last thing we need if the universe is already broken. Can you imagine—”

“You’re rambling again,” Todd said. Dirk tended to ramble when he was trying to distract from how nervous he was. Normally Todd let him wear himself out—by the time he was averaging three-syllables per word, it was nearly over—but Todd thought maybe, with Bart there, it wasn’t the best time.

“Okay, bye then.” Bart hefted her chainsaw up and turned back for the door. “See you around.”

“Or not,” Dirk said. “I’m fine with…not.”

As soon as the door slammed shut behind her, Dirk slumped back into the couch cushions, all the tension bleeding out of him like he’d just run a marathon.

“Shouldn’t we go try to stop her?” Todd asked eventually.

Dirk stared at him. “What? No! Did you miss the bit where she’s a holistic assassin? The whole point is that she can’t be stopped. She’s unstoppable. And I don’t want to be chased through the streets dodging bullets again.”

“She can’t actually kill you, though. You’re like two sides of the same weird coin.”

“She can still kill you,” Dirk said, and when Todd opened his mouth, Dirk barreled over him. “And even if she didn’t and we both miraculously made it out alive, I guarantee plenty of other people will get killed who might not have to if I just keep myself out of it. My presence escalates things, Todd, and I’m really sick of seeing people die, especially when it’s my fault.” He curled up a little tighter. “The capybara case was good,” he said in a small voice. “Nobody got hurt. I don’t want to push my luck and hope for two in a row like that.”

“You don’t know,” Todd began.

Dirk shook his head and pulled a pillow into his lap, wrapping his arms around it. “Can we just not actively court disaster for a few days? I know it’ll catch up to me soon enough—probably by the end of the week—but can’t we stay here and just…not? For a little while?”

Todd swallowed hard. His mouth had gone painfully dry and all he wanted was to pull Dirk into a hug—a long one, maybe one where he would never let go at all—but instead he nodded. “Sure. We can do that. I didn’t really want to go up against a chainsaw anyway. Did you see that thing? I’m good.”

Dirk’s grip on his pillow-shield lessened, fractionally. “Thanks. I’m not—I’m not avoiding cases. I’m just.”

“Hey.” Todd struggled for a second before putting his hand on Dirk’s shoulder. Dirk met his gaze with wide eyes. “It’s okay,” Todd said. “It’s not a case. It’s just Bart, doing her thing. We can stay here and just…chill. You want pizza? I’ll order pizza.”

“I’d like that. But can we just…sit, for a minute, first?”

The leather of Dirk’s jacket was warm under Todd’s palm. Having left his hand there too long already, he felt it would be somehow more awkward to remove it now. Dirk looked at him pleadingly. Todd sighed, patted his shoulder, and pulled Dirk into a hug without either of them moving from their side-by-side positions.

“Dude, you’re fine,” Todd said. Dirk made a very quiet sound, but didn’t try to move away. After a moment, he shuffled around to put both arms very carefully around Todd’s neck, like he wasn’t sure whether Todd would suddenly detangle himself and leave. Todd sighed again and held him tighter. “You’re fine,” he repeated, “and I’m not going anywhere.”

“Of course you’re not,” Dirk said, his words faintly muffled from the way he was pressing his face into Todd’s neck. “You’re my assistant. You can’t leave me now.”

A pause.

“Anyway, Ken shot me. In the leg. I’m not sure I want to stop Bart from doing her thing.”

“Maybe not,” Todd agreed.

xXx

Bart walked with a sense of purpose at odds with the fact that she didn’t know where she was going. That was just how it was. She walked until something got in her way, and then she either killed it or changed direction. Sometimes she drove. When the car stopped working, she walked some more. As a general rule, she didn’t know much about cities or states. She was where she was, and up until very recently, wherever she was was where she needed to be.

It wasn’t a bad life, until Ken had turned up to offer some perspective.

Perspective hurt. She didn’t like perspective.

Her most recent car abandoned some miles back down the highway, she walked the road’s shoulder with her head down and her chainsaw swinging heavily by her side. There hadn’t been anyone else on the road since her last kill, back where she’d left the car. It hadn’t fared well in the collision, but she had walked away unharmed, and that more than anything made her feel better about the whole situation. She might have to kill Ken, but she had walked away from another successful assassination. She was back where the universe wanted her.

A van rumbled in the distance, a low and throaty sound like a wild animal. She raised her head to watch it crest over the horizon, huge and hulking in its approach. She stopped walking and let the chainsaw come to a rest beside her.

The van rolled to a stop ten feet away, its engine coughing and snarling as it idled. The door slid open and the leader leaned out.

“Hey,” Bart said. “I know you guys.”

“Your universe ain’t meddling with my boys,” Martin said. “Keep walking, Marzanna.”

“Aw, let her meddle!” someone shouted from inside, and the van erupted in a cacophony of howls and jeers.

“You guys weren’t at Blackwing last time I was there,” Bart said. “You got out when Dirk did? Before I got there?”

Martin grunted an affirmative.

“You see Ken?”

Martin looked at her with narrowed eyes. “New director?”

“Guess so. Think I need to kill him.”

“Martin? Who is that?” someone from inside the van called.

“Bad news,” Martin replied.

“Awesome, I want to meet her. Bring her in.”

Martin fixed Bart with a cold glare, but he pulled the door back and stepped aside for her to climb in. A dark-haired girl was holding court with the other Rowdies, watching Bart with open curiosity as she joined them. Martin swung the door shut and followed.

“There’s more of you now,” Bart observed, dropping the chainsaw into her lap as she sat. A rainbow-coloured creature shuffled over and put her face up in Bart’s, giving her a loud sniff followed by a lick on the cheek.

“You’re from that other place, Wendimoor,” Bart said.

“That’s Beast,” the other girl introduced. “I’m Amanda. You know the Rowdies. You’re from Blackwing too?”

“Marzanna,” Martin said.

“Call me Bart, but yeah, I’m from Blackwing. I’m a holistic assassin. I kill people.”

“Cool,” Amanda said. “But only bad people, right? Like, you can’t kill us. I heard about the time you tried to kill Dirk,” she added. “How that didn’t work.”

Bart scrunched up her nose. “No. That part wasn’t good.”

“So what are you doing now? Just like, hitchhiking your way to the next murder?”

“I’m going back to Blackwing so I can fix the universe.”

The rest of the Rowdies all made gagging noises. Amanda ignored them.

“You know about it being broken?”

“Yeah. Might be my fault. Gonna try killing a guy to see if that helps. Why? You know something?”

“Not much,” Amanda admitted, “but I’m working on it.” She reached into her bag on the floor and pulled out a wand with a blue crystal tip, and Bart reared back with her teeth bared.

“That’s the stick that threw those shapes at me! The one from—“

“Suzie Boreton,” Amanda finished. “Yeah. It’s mine now. I don’t know how to do everything she did, but I’ve figured out some cool shit. You want to know more about the universe?”

Bart eyed the wand suspiciously. “Yeah?”

Amanda smiled and lifted it to rest eye-level at Bart’s head. “Check this out.”

Bart squeezed her eyes shut when the wand came down. When she blinked them open again, she was somewhere completely different.

“Oh,” she said.

The universe glimmered at her from an unfathomable distance above, winking like Ken’s computer lights, shimmering like stars in the night sky. They made patterns and swirls through the nothingness, and she stared, transfixed. It was so much easier to see like this.

“Hey,” said a voice.

Bart turned slowly, tearing her gaze from the wrong side of the universe to face the man. His eyes were red, with strange, misshapen pupils, and he had the kind of face that belonged on a magazine cover.

“You’re Friedkin,” she said. “Dirk told me you were pretty.”

“What? Okay. Listen—Bart, right? What are you doing here?”

“I came to figure out the universe. What are you doing here?”

“I fell in.” Friedkin shrugged. “Cool though, right? I’m not dead here. I think I might have been dead, out there. Or dying. It sucked.”

“Ken stabbed you?”

“With these giant scissors. I definitely like hurting other people more than I like getting hurt.”

“Hey, me too. So why are you still here?”

“I don’t know how to get out. And I like it here. Stuff makes more sense when I can see it like this. I feel less stupid now. I think I was an idiot before.” He looked distressed. “Does that mean I’m not an idiot anymore? Because I realized that?”

Bart shrugged. “Dunno. That’s like, philosophy, or something. I’m just here to figure out what broke so I can fix it.”

“Priest was scared of you,” Friedkin said. “He said you could kill anybody; that you were unstoppable.”

“Yeah, that’s true.”

“You’re not killing me, though.”

Bart tilted her head to one side as she considered him. “No, I’m not. Huh. That’s weird. You want to come back with me and see if I feel like it out there?”

“Not really. I can understand things, in here. And I’m not, like, bleeding to death, which is cool.”

They both turned back to stare at the stars.

“It’s kinda peaceful in here,” Bart said. “Like I’m connected how I’m supposed to be again. It’s nice.”

Friedkin hummed in agreement.

Amanda pulled Bart out again a minute or an hour or a lifetime later.

“So?” she demanded. “Do you get it now?”

Bart twisted her mouth from side to side. “Thought I did, for a minute. Now I’m back here, in the van with you guys, and everything’s all…” She waved. “How it was. The same. You know how you wake up sometimes and you’ve still got all these pictures in your head, and they were real a minute ago, but now you’re forgetting? Like that.”

“Yeah.” Amanda huffed out a sigh. “I’m still working on it. Maybe I should bring Dirk there, see what he thinks of it.”

Bart snorted. “Dirk Gently don’t know anything.”

The rainbow monster shuffled closer and poked Bart in the arm. “Bibbet?”

Bart blinked. “What?”

“Bibbet. Know Bibbet? Beauty-Boy?”

“Are those words?”

“She means Dirk,” Amanda supplied. “You want us to drop you off somewhere so you can get back to Blackwing?”

“Wherever,” Bart said. “Don’t matter. I’ll get there. Unless you want to come. You guys might not be invincible, but you like to wreck stuff. That could be fun.”

“Sorry. We’ve got other stuff going on.” Amanda flicked the wand up in an apologetic gesture; Bart watched it mistrustfully. “Good luck, though! Sticking it to the man, and everything.”

“To Ken?”

“I mean—yeah, I guess literally works. Stick whatever to whoever.”

“Okay. I’m gonna go now.”

“Sure, yeah. Go do your thing. We’ll see you around.” 

Amanda nodded and Martin pulled the door open for Bart to exit, chainsaw in tow. She slung it up over her shoulder as she hit the road and continued on her way, the fabric of the universe shimmering behind her eyelids.

xXx

“We coulda gone with her to wreck stuff,” Vogel said.

Amanda settled in against Martin’s side as Cross clambered up to take the wheel. “Nope. You guys aren’t going back to Blackwing, not for any reason.”

“We go in on the offensive with Marzanna, they couldn’t have caught us again,” Martin said.

She shook her head. “I saw what they did, remember? In my freaky visions. You guys were a mess. I don’t care if she goes in like a tank and fucking razes the whole place to the ground; we’re not going. Anyway, we’ve got our own stuff to do, right?”

Martin slung his arm around her shoulders and she smiled, turning the wand over in her hands.

“They won’t get us again,” Martin promised in a low voice, just for her.

Gripps dropped down on her other side and began dividing her hair into sections for a French braid. She kicked her legs out, putting her boots in Vogel’s lap as she got comfortable.

“No, they won’t,” she said. “This time, I won’t let them.”

The wand glowed blue like a star from another universe. She was going to pick apart all its secrets one by one, and it would make her invincible, and whatever was wrong with the universe would unravel with a flick of her hand.

“Fucking witchacuckoo,” Vogel said with a grin.

xXx

Todd still wasn’t sure where Dirk’s apartment was, or if he even had one, but they had both taken to sleeping at the agency office. Todd had given up his apartment after Wendimoor; he never had gotten anyone to fix the door after the Rowdy Three’s introduction, and after a while it seemed more work to make it habitable again than just finding somewhere else to live. The agency had a room through the back that Todd converted—not permanently, he told everyone loudly, and often—and after a week, Dirk started crashing on the couch.

“It’s so much more convenient if I’m here all the time,” Dirk explained. “What if we get a case in the middle of the night? Bam—I’m on it. Can’t catch me off guard.”

Todd shrugged and went along with it. Secretly he thought Dirk just didn’t want to be alone. Todd knew he still had nightmares; he heard him sometimes in the night, pacing the agency floor when no one should be awake, and in the morning Dirk always had dark smudges under his eyes, and he flinched at loud noises and sudden movements. He never heard Dirk cry in the night, though. At first he thought he must have slept through it and only woken when he heard Dirk get up from the couch. He didn’t realize until later that Dirk cried silently, even in his sleep, like he needed to hide it.

Sometimes Todd was tempted to hit the road and catch up with Bart and help her tear Blackwing apart with his bare hands.

But then, other nights, Dirk wouldn’t shut the fuck up.

“Todd, if there were two of you, do you think you’d be twice as productive, or that each of you would just put in half the effort?”

“Dirk, please shut up and go to sleep.”

“I think you’d be twice as productive,” Dirk decided. “One of you could concentrate on all the important things, like case-solving and client-wrangling and remembering to replace the milk—”

“You’re the one who never replaces the milk!”

“And the other one could do all the angsty brooding and being grumpy and self-deprecating. That one could just sit at home and keep out of the way. I think the other you would get so much more done.”

“Dirk!”

“Todd, it’s eleven-thirty at night. Why are you shouting?”

xXx

The universe had never made much sense to Todd. Even when he believed, truly-madly-deeply from the very bottom of his soul in the interconnectedness of all things, it still didn’t make sense to him. He thought he should be used to the not-making-sense of it. He’d thought he was, for a while, before Dirk. He accepted things as they came, rolled along on the tide of one bad decision after another till he was drowning under them. Resigned to it all.

Dirk brought changes.

Dirk did not bring sense.

So that night when they were sitting side by side on the agency couch, close enough to feel each other’s warmth but not close enough to touch, a half-eaten pizza sprawled over the table before them and Netflix queued up on the laptop, Todd shouldn’t have been surprised when Dirk turned to him, lit up with whatever point he was making, and their eyes caught and Todd couldn’t look away. That was nothing new in itself, but Dirk paused, as if considering him, and his gaze flickered down for a fraction of a second to Todd’s lips before lifting up again, and Todd’s heart skipped a beat and his mouth went dry.

He reached for his fourth slice of pizza, desperate for any excuse to break the moment, and when he settled back against the cushions Dirk wasn’t looking at him anymore. Todd didn’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed.

“Farah called earlier,” he said. Changing the subject was the coward’s way out, but he was a coward, and anyway, they hadn’t been talking about it in the first place. They never talked about it.

“Oh?” Dirk asked. “How is she? Still enjoying Bergsberg?”

“She says things are good. No more alternate dimensions yet, and I think she’s going a bit stir-crazy, but she says she’s happy, at least for now.”

“And Tina and Hobbs?”

“Both good,” Todd confirmed. “Tina’s two weeks sober now, and they’re looking at getting a real apartment together, instead of her just crashing on Tina’s couch forever.”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with couches,” Dirk said, “but that’s good. Is that good?”

“Yeah, of course. I’m happy she’s happy.”

“You’re not…waiting for her to come back?”

Todd shrugged. “She will. She’s still part of the agency, right? She’ll come back and solve batshit cases with us again. But if she wants to go be a deputy in the meantime, that’s cool.”

Dirk stared at him like he was a particularly complicated puzzle. Maybe a rubik’s cube. Todd folded his arms and waited.

“Aren’t you and Farah a thing?” Dirk finally asked.

“What? No—we made out once or twice on the road, but we were never a—thing, thing.”

“You kissed her when we were under the love spell.”

“She kissed Tina under the love spell,” Todd countered.

“Half the people at the concert kissed Tina. I think I kissed Tina.”

“I kissed you.” Todd bit his tongue hard and they both went quiet.

“I thought we were both pretending we couldn’t remember anything that happened under the spell,” Dirk finally said. “Like how you ended up wearing my glow sticks, and I lost my trousers and wound up in a cell with a pink fur coat.”

“Right. No, we weren’t talking about any of that. Where did your pants go, anyway?”

“Trousers, Todd,” Dirk stressed. “Trousers. And I don’t know. I assume they made their way home with someone else; I’m not holding onto much hope that I’ll ever see them again. Of course, there weren’t many people who kept their clothes on by the end of that night.”

“You didn’t keep the coat.”

“I don’t think it was really working for me.”

“Don’t sell yourself short. That was a look. Any guy who can wear a coat like that? That’s a guy you don’t want to mess with.”

“Todd…”

“No, hey, we said no talking, remember? Everybody kissed everybody else because we were all high on magic or whatever, and that’s it. But for the record, no, definitely not waiting for Farah. Or pining, or whatever you were imagining. And she’s clearly not pining for me either.”

“Well, good. I’m glad we got that cleared up.”

“Did we, though?”

“Yes, of course. Not that we’re talking about it.”

“I’ve completely lost the thread of this conversation,” Todd said.

“It got away from me a little bit,” Dirk admitted, but the expression on his face, like he was one step closer to solving the puzzle, said something completely different.

xXx

Farah and Tina sat in the parked car on the side of the road just outside of town, watching for oncoming traffic. There wasn’t any. They hadn’t seen a car drive by in over half an hour.

“This is fun, though,” Tina said, popping a sucker out of her mouth. “Like, relaxing, right?”

“Right,” Farah agreed. “Relaxing.”

“Are you bored?”

“Me? Bored? Nooo. No no no. Not at all. Why? Do I look bored? Because I’m definitely not.”

“It’s not as cool as fighting weird magicians and having to shoot each other,” Tina said, “but I don’t think I’d want to do that every day. Or every week. It kinda hurt.”

“It hurt a lot.”

“I’m glad you stuck around, though.” Tina gave Farah an amiable punch in the shoulder. “I like your company. Makes the day go faster. I would’ve been stuck out here by myself, or Hobbs would be out here by himself and I’d be stuck at the station.” She gave her sucker a contemplative crunch. “Don’t tell Hobbs, but I don’t like thinking about him going off to work cases by himself. I like that you’ve got our backs now.”

“We haven’t had a case since Wendimoor,” Farah pointed out. “He hasn’t had the chance to go off by himself.”

“Nope, and now he won’t have that chance at all!”

“Tina, he’s okay. We’re all okay.”

Tina nodded, pulled the sucker out again, and immediately got it stuck in her hair. “Ugh, gross. No, I know that. We’re all good. I’m just happy you’re here, deputy.” She turned to flash Farah a blinding grin, but before Farah could reply, something moved on the horizon and Tina whooped and leaned out the window. “Here’s one!” She aimed her laser at the car as it passed before pulling herself back inside to slump defeatedly behind the wheel. “Dang it, another one under the limit. Nobody speeds around here.”

“That’s good, though.”

“Yeah, I know. You sure it’s not too boring out here for you?”

“I think boring might be just what I need right now,” Farah said.

Tina grinned and took her hand. Her grip was warm and steady and just a little sticky from the sucker mishap. “Good. Hang around until Dirk needs you back at the agency. You still wanna look at places to rent together?”

Farah decided she didn’t mind sticky. “Yeah, I do.”

xXx

Todd woke not to footsteps, but the quiet hush of someone speaking in the other room. He lay on his back a while, staring up at the ceiling and trying to pick up the rhythm of conversation, but it was muffled through his bedroom door. He swung his feet to the floor and sat on the edge of his mattress a minute longer, straining his ears—was Dirk talking on the phone? He checked the clock. It was after one. He sighed and moved to the door, one hand on the knob, as he wondered whether to creep into the hall to eavesdrop. The idea made him feel like an ass, but that was par for the course, and if Dirk wasn’t on the phone but talking to himself in the middle of the night, Todd should probably intervene. He opened the door.

In the main room of the agency, he caught a shift of movement that came to an abrupt still as he crossed the threshold.

The table that normally stood by the far arm of the couch was in the middle of the floor.

“Dirk? Are you rearranging the furniture at one in the morning?”

Dirk, who was sitting on the couch in his pyjamas, was clearly doing no such thing.

“Sorry, did I wake you?” Dirk asked. “I’ll be quieter.”

“No, it’s fine. I just came to see if you were okay.”

“Of course I’m okay. Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You’re talking to yourself in the middle of the night?”

“No I wasn’t.”

“You’re talking to…the furniture? In the middle of the night?” Todd looked at the table again. “Oh my god, is that Mona?”

“No…? Yes. Definitely.”

The table shuffled from side to side like it was waving.

“Okay,” Todd said. “I, uh. Hi, Mona. I didn’t know she came back with us.”

“No, neither did I until quite recently,” Dirk said, in a tone that suggested he wasn’t in the least concerned that they had been living with a secret third party all this time. “She’s good company, though, even when she’s inanimate. A very good listener.”

“I didn’t mean to interrupt. I just wanted to make sure you weren’t having some kind of crisis.”

Dirk plastered on a smile. “No crises here. You’re not interrupting though, if you wanted to…?”

Todd glanced back at his bedroom down the hall. The darkness was velvety and inviting, but Dirk—looking strangely vulnerable in his pyjamas, his smile a bit too forced to be anything but fake—made him sigh and shuffle down to sit beside him.

“Who needs sleep anyway, right? What’s up?”

Dirk shrugged.

“Bad dreams?” Todd guessed.

“Did you know I used to have a recurring dream about you and Farah while I was in Blackwing? I dreamed you'd come to rescue me. You had a crossbow and a leather jacket. It was very badass.”

“I’m sorry we couldn’t find you sooner.”

“What? No—you were looking; that’s the important thing. I knew you’d find me eventually.”

“We didn’t, though. You ended up in a car trunk that fell out of a tree. We never made it to Blackwing.”

“Well, no, but you tried, and I appreciate that. And those dreams—I mean, it got a bit annoying that I kept falling for it every single time, but they were better than nothing. I missed you, you know.”

“I missed you too.” Todd nudged him. “Hey, but we’re both here now, right? We’re good. We made it.”

Dirk’s smile turned softer and more genuine. “We did. And we’ve got our agency and our sign and our office. It’s good.”

“So what was keeping you awake?”

“Oh, nothing in particular. Just wanted a bit of company. Mona’s good about that. Not necessarily as a table, but in general. You?”

“Yeah, maybe I just needed some company too.” Todd traced a pattern in the fabric of the arm of the couch.

Dirk made an inquisitive noise.

“I’ve been thinking about something the Boy said, before he sent me back,” Todd admitted. “About us being perfect together. He knows we’re not—together, together, right?”

“Ah. Yes. I may have told him about you back in Blackwing, while he was still old and in a coma? About you being my new assistant, and perfect, yes. In hindsight I can see how that may have been misleading.”

“Dirk, you know I’m not perfect.”

“Well, that was before you abandoned me to the tender mercies of the rainbow monster, but to be fair, you didn’t know that was going to happen. And before I heard your English accent.”

“Those are my only shortcomings?”

“At the moment, yes, and I’m hardly holding them against you.”

“I can think of a couple more.”

Dirk put his hand on Todd’s; startled, Todd glanced up to meet his eye.

“Don’t,” Dirk said. “Whatever you’re about to drag yourself over the coals for this time—don’t. We’ve all done things we’re not proud of, but we’ve done good things, too. Or, we’ve tried to, anyway.” He squeezed Todd’s fingers tighter. “There’s nothing you can say to convince me you’re not a good person, Todd. You can’t do it.”

“Perfect,” Todd echoed.

Dirk rolled his eyes. “Perfect may have been a slight exaggeration born of, you know, my wasting away in Blackwing without any company for weeks on end. You know what they say about hearts and absences. I’m not taking it back, though.”

Todd looked at the space between them where their fingers interlaced. Dirk’s hand was too warm, and it sent a rush of heat through Todd that made his heart beat faster and his palms go slick with sweat.

“I should get back to bed,” he said, and haltingly disentangled his fingers from their knot. He rose in increments, not really wanting to go, but not wanting to stay and decipher Dirk’s expression, either.

Dirk blinked. “Right. It’s late. I didn’t mean to keep you.”

“I’ll see you in the morning. Good night, Dirk.” Todd turned and collided with the table in the dark. “Ow! Fuck. Sorry, Mona.” He changed course to avoid it and continued back to his room. It wasn’t until he had his hand on the doorknob that he realized the table must have moved for him to walk into it like that. He supposed if that was Mona’s revenge for him abandoning Dirk mid conversation, he deserved it.

He was about to close his door when the soft cadence of voices returned.

“Are you going to tell him?” Mona asked.

“Yes.” A pause. “No, I am.”

“Do you want me to tell him for you?”

“No, I’ll do it.” Dirk sighed. “I just…don’t know when, exactly.”

Todd wondered if he had stayed sitting on the couch a minute longer, hand in hand, Dirk might have told him whatever he needed to tell him then and there. He shut the door and crawled back into bed. His hand was still warm and tingly where Dirk had held it, like he’d never been touched skin to skin before.

xXx

Bart kicked her feet up on the gas station counter as she leaned back and unwrapped the sandwich. It had belonged to the attendant, but he was dead now, cooling in the corner. She chewed contemplatively for a while, the fluorescent lights in the ceiling flickering and giving off a faint buzz, just barely audible over the radio. She was close to Blackwing. It should only take another day or two. She could feel it in her bones.

The radio changed songs, and Bart paused, the sandwich lifted halfway to her mouth.

“Although loneliness has always been a friend of mine, I’m leaving my life in your hands,” the song crooned. “People say I’m crazy…”

“Huh,” she said.

A car pulled up outside. She pocketed the cash from the register, tucked the remains of the sandwich in the crook of her elbow, picked up her chainsaw, and headed out.

As she drove down the highway in her new car, only a little bloodstained, she sang under her breath in a rusty voice, “Don’t care who you are, where you’re from, don’t care what you did, as long as you love me.”

xXx

“It’s been a week,” Todd said, stirring a pot of pasta sauce on the stove in the office kitchenette. His body had finally rebelled at the lack of nutrients in a diet of pizza and ramen and he had bought some actual food. Dirk stood by his elbow, allegedly helping. “You think Bart made it Blackwing yet?”

“I always thought I would know if Blackwing was destroyed,” Dirk said. “Not in a psychic way, just…I grew up there. It was all I knew for so long.”

“But you can’t tell?”

Dirk shrugged. “I’ve got better things to think about now, haven’t I? Though I suppose it would be reassuring to know that it was finally gone for good. I’m not saying killing people is the best idea, but if anyone deserves it, it’s that lot.”

“Do you think Priest will come looking for you again?”

Dirk wrapped his arms around himself and leaned one hip against the counter. “I don’t know. It’s possible. But I’m not going to live the rest of my life looking over my shoulder for him, whatever Bart does. I’ve got a life now. And an office. They can’t just come barging in and take that away.”

“I still have those knuckle dusters Farah gave me,” Todd offered. “Between them and the shark-cat, I bet we could take him.”

By the time they had returned from Wendimoor the kitten had grown up and gone slightly feral in their absence. Dirk had spent the better part of a month taming it again, which, with the shark, had been a much more terrifying ordeal than re-domesticating any cat had the right to be.

“No, you’re right. We’re fine,” Dirk agreed.

Todd hummed and held the spoon out. “Taste test?”

Dirk leaned in to lick it. “That’s good.” He sounded surprised. “You should cook more often.”

“Yeah, right.”

“No, really. I like it.”

“Well, I couldn’t take another night of food that came out of a box.” Todd dumped a scoop of pasta and sauce on a plate and handed it to him. “Amanda and I used to joke that we’d get scurvy if we had to fend for ourselves too long. Guess we adjusted.”

“I think you’ve adjusted just fine. Do you think the Rowdy Three can get scurvy?”

“Do they even need to eat?” Todd asked. “Other than psychic energy, I mean.”

“I don’t know. Is there a psychic equivalent to scurvy? They can probably get that.”

They carried their plates to the couch and sat down. Their meals together had become a comfortable routine, even when it was only cereal for dinner, and Todd liked the company after his years of living alone. Dirk, for his part, didn’t seem to want to do anything alone, ever again.

“Thank you,” Dirk said suddenly.

“You’re welcome?” 

“I mean, for everything. Not just dinner, though it’s lovely. But for looking for me when Blackwing took me, and saving me from the Purple People Eater, and helping me solve the Wendimoor case, and coming back to the agency with me. All of it. I don’t know if I ever properly thanked you, and—I should.”

“You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.” 

Dirk set his plate down on the table and shuffled around to face Todd. Todd realized this was going to be a whole thing, and reluctantly put his food down as well.

“Sorry, I just wanted to do this before we started eating. You kissed me.”

“We already confirmed that everyone kissed everyone,” Todd said. His stomach was turning somersaults.

“Right, which absolutely doesn’t mean anything, except I have this theory that that wasn’t the first time you’d considered it, so basically I’d like to know whether you’d mind if I kissed you now. Here. Without any magical influence.”

Todd’s whole brain stuttered to a stop. “You—I—really?”

“Yes. Definitely. I know we weren’t talking about it, but that didn’t seem to be very helpful, and I like you, Todd. A lot. And I’d really like to kiss you, and I’m pretty sure you’d like to kiss me again too, so I thought I should ask before one of us is kidnapped or sent back in time or to another dimension. Again. So. Yes.”

“Like—like me, like me?” Todd asked, still trying to get his brain in gear.

“Are you having a stroke?”

“No, shut up. I didn’t know you liked—guys.”

Dirk stared at him. Todd flushed a little but stared back.

“Did you seriously not—” Dirk began.

“No! I mean, you never said—”

“I’m not exactly subtle, Todd. About anything, ever. I’m literally wearing a rainbow on my jacket right now.” He pointed. It was unmistakably a rainbow. “And what I said about the Beast, how that wasn’t really my thing?”

“I thought you just meant you were into more, you know. Human women.”

“Right. Well, I do prefer human people, that’s true. But not women. I like men, Todd. I’m very gay. Not sure how you missed that, but there you go. Would you like me to write it down?”

“No, thanks, I’ve got it now.” Todd was quiet for a minute as he processed things. In retrospect, it did make an awful lot of sense. “It’s because you’re British,” he finally said. “It makes it hard to tell.”

“Todd.”

Todd looked up, and the instant he did, Dirk reached out and cupped his face, leaned in, and kissed him. Todd’s eyes fluttered shut instinctively. Dirk’s lips were chapped but warm, a steady pressure against Todd’s; Dirk’s palm held him in place, his fingers feather light on Todd’s jaw. Todd’s insides fluttered with butterflies as the warmth spread from his lips to fill his lungs, and from there, every limb. It was like inhaling summer. For a second Todd flashed back to the music festival, under the spell; then, he had been transfused with sheer, overpowering love, like he was at one with the universe. Their kiss then had been hazy and wet and over too quickly, but the feeling behind it—he swore it was the same.

Dirk pulled back just far enough to breathe, resting their foreheads together for the span of a heartbeat, his breath warm on Todd’s face, before sitting back. Todd opened his eyes. Dirk’s were shining and hopeful, his bottom lip caught between his teeth as he waited for Todd to speak.

“Okay,” Todd said hoarsely. Dirk’s hand was still on his face. “That was a thing.”

“A good thing?”

Todd wet his lips. Dirk’s gaze dropped to follow the movement.

“I think so, yeah,” Todd said. “So was this what Mona wanted you to talk to me about?”

“Yes. The whole feelings thing. I’m glad I did,” he added. “I would have liked to do it much sooner, but you didn’t seem to want to acknowledge…anything.”

“How we made out a little bit when we were both super high on magic?”

“It was hardly making out. We kissed. Once. Possibly accompanied by some light groping.”

“So, what we did just now. Does that count as making out?”

“I think making out should at least involve tongues,” Dirk said, looking perfectly serious.

“That sounds fair. We can do that.”

xXx

Todd’s bed was too small to really fit two grown men, but he and Dirk sprawled over each other and made the best of it. Todd traced patterns on Dirk’s undershirt between his shoulder blades and wondered if this was what being in love felt like. He’d never been in love before.

“Do you suppose we should go look for a real apartment?” Dirk mused. His chin was propped up on both hands as he lay on his stomach, one leg draped over Todd’s like insurance to keep Todd from leaving.

“I don’t know. I kind of like living in the office. What if we moved out but you got a case in the middle of the night? You’d have to come all the way back here instead of just getting up from the couch.”

“Yes, but I think another month of sleeping on the couch might actually fuse all my vertebrae together, and while I could certainly keep solving cases in that condition, it would make things a bit harder than they have to be.”

Todd poked Dirk in the ribs. Dirk meeped and batted him away. 

“You can sleep in here,” Todd said. “I know it’s cramped, but we could get a bigger bed.”

“Really? You don’t want your own space?”

Todd thought about stretching out and having the bed to himself. He thought about Dirk talking a mile a minute into the small hours of the night when Todd wanted to sleep, and he thought about fighting for the sheets or getting overheated or getting kicked in the shins.

He thought about being able to wake Dirk from a nightmare before he started crying in his sleep, instead of hearing it from another room.

“No,” Todd said, “no, I’m cool with sharing. Anyway, if we get sick of each other, we can work something else out, right?”

Dirk nestled in closer, dropping his head down to Todd’s shoulder and slinging an arm around his ribs to hold him tight. “We won’t get sick of each other,” he said, his breath coming in warm little puffs over Todd’s chest. “You’re my assistant. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me.”

Todd shrugged and brought his arm up around Dirk’s shoulders. “Yeah, okay. I’m down for that.”

xXx

“You heard from Dirk and Todd lately?” Tina asked.

“Dirk’s been sending me pictures of capybaras,” Farah replied, frowning at her phone. They sat side by side in bed together, one of Tina’s survival shows queued up on the laptop. “Also, I think he and Todd are together.”

Tina pumped her fist in the air. “Fucking knew it!”

“No new cases yet, though.”

“Cool, cool. Hey, you should ask Todd to send us some of that maple syrup. They still got some left? Hobbs loves that stuff.”

“They had twenty-three liters, last time I heard. I’ll ask.”

xXx

“Dirk, if we sent them all twenty-three liters at once, do you think Farah would be mad?”

xXx

“Boss?”

Amanda rolled over to face Vogel. “Yeah?”

They were lying on their backs, staring up at the stars. The van hulked behind them, throwing a black shadow in the moonlight.

“After you fix the universe, what’s going to change?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know how to fix it, yet.”

“You gonna leave?”

She propped herself up on one elbow and furrowed her brow. “No. Why would I leave?”

“Like, if you needed to go do other stuff,” he said. “Important stuff. Like, universe stuff.”

He looked terrified, but also like he was trying to hide it. She took his hand and squeezed it till her fingers hurt.

“No way. I’m a Rowdy, right? We stick together. I’m not going anywhere.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

When he stopped looking panicked she picked her way across the camp to Martin’s side. He sat propped up against the van’s front wheel, unmindful of the dirt.

“Hey, Drummer-girl.”

She sank down beside him and rested her head on his shoulder. “Hey.”

“You thinking deep thoughts?”

“Nah, not really.” She looked up at the stars. They winked back at her. “I don’t know what I’m doing. Does that matter?”

He shrugged under her. “It gonna stop you?”

“No.”

“Then nope. We got your back, always. Wherever you wanna go.”

“Even if I can’t fix it?”

“Even then. But you will.” He nodded to where she’d left her bag. “You got your fancy stick, you got your visions, and you got us. You’ll get it done.”

She hummed and held his hand. He let her. “Yeah, okay,” she said. “I’ll figure something out.”

xXx

Blackwing looked the same as Bart had left it, albeit bloodier, now. Ken looked the same as Bart had last seen him, blood and all.

“You’re back,” he said.

Her chainsaw had gummed up sometime around the twentieth guard; she’d dropped it in the corridor, took up the nearest gun, and continued on without it. When she ran out of bullets she bludgeoned the next person to death and went on unarmed. She didn’t need a weapon. The universe was singing her song; she was exactly where she needed to be.

“Are you going to kill me?” Ken asked.

“You remember that song on the radio? The one you knew all the words to, and you sang it for me? Back in the car that time?”

“Yeah, I remember that song, Bart.”

“Don’t care who you are, what you did,” she recited, her voice scratchy and out of tune. “It went like that, right?”

“Yeah, it did.”

“I thought we were friends.”

“We were. We are.”

“You’re with Blackwing now.”

“You could be with Blackwing too.” 

His voice was gentle, cajoling. She shook her head like she could physically negate his words.

“As long as you love me,” she said. “I dunno if that’s our song anymore, Ken. I do care about all that stuff. Universe does too, you know.”

Ken looked past her to the bloody footprints she’d tracked through Blackwing’s impeccably white halls. “I can see that.”

“You know what I told you last time?”

“That you felt like you were supposed to kill me? But you didn’t, Bart. Not even when you decided to leave.”

“Yeah. I’ve been thinking since then, about the universe, and what I’m supposed to do. And it all came back to you.” When she smiled, there was other people’s blood in her teeth. “So here we are.”

“Here we are,” he echoed.

xXx

“If you could be anywhere, any time, in any universe, where would you choose?” Dirk asked.

Todd looked up from his coffee. “Those are a lot of options. I don’t know. Time travel got kind of soured for me. Wendimoor was cool until everyone wanted to kill us. And I’m kind of over cross-country road trips for a while.”

Dirk nodded. “Understandable.”

“You?”

“I’d like to go back to London eventually, but for now, I’m happy where I am. Just, you know.” He shrugged and smiled. “Here, with you. Solving cases. Putting the universe back in order. It’s good.”

“Making out and getting laid?”

Dirk’s nose scrunched up. “Is it weird now, being my assistant? I’ll have to promote you to partner to make that not weird. Oh! Does that mean we need a new sign?”

They both looked up at the monstrosity that took up nearly the whole wall.

“No, I’m good,” Todd said. “We can keep the sign. Maybe you can print new business cards instead.”

Dirk brightened and slung his arm around Todd’s shoulders. “I can do that. Are you ready for a new case? It feels about time for a new one.”

“Will we get paid this time?”

“No promises. Want to drive around until something happens?”

“Sure, why not.”

Dirk’s driving was as nerve-wracking as it ever was, with one hand on the wheel and the other clasping Todd’s hand over the gearshift. Todd finally turned the radio on to distract himself from the constant feeling imminent death.

“Oh, turn it up! I like this one.”

Todd turned it up, then frowned. “Is this the Backstreet Boys?”

“Who?”

“No, it is. Dirk, I’m changing the station.”

“Don’t care who you are, where you’re from—”

“Dirk—”

“What you did—”

“Dirk, no. We’re listening to something else.” Todd firmly twisted the dial until the song was buried under a rush of static, to be replaced by the steady bass of something indie and obscure. “That’s better.”

Dirk rolled his eyes but didn’t fight to change it back, and he didn’t let go of Todd’s hand, either. His touch warmed Todd to his bones and Todd thought about sleeping in a twin-sized bed and eating breakfast together and sharing kisses on the couch, and he thought, yeah, facing death on a semi-regular basis might be worth it.

“Is the universe giving you anything yet?” he asked.

Dirk grinned and swerved left onto a new road. “We’re close.”

Todd laced their fingers together and held on. Wherever they ended up, he absolutely believed it was where they were meant to be.

xXx

“Are you going to kill me?” Ken asked again.

Bart gnawed her lip. She was unarmed. Ken had a gun. Neither of those facts meant anything. The universe thrummed with the ebb and flow of the interconnectedness of all things. Somewhere, a radio station played the song that wasn’t theirs anymore.

“I don’t know.”

**Author's Note:**

> I looked up Backstreet Boys lyrics for this.
> 
> Also, I may have lost track of who shot/stabbed whom in the finale, so just roll with it. It's fine. It's all good.  
>    
> EDIT: Have been informed twas Lord Badevil who stabbed Friedkin, not Ken. My bad(evil).
> 
>  
> 
> [Fandom blog](http://sharkhette.tumblr.com)  
> [Art blog](http://sharkdraws.tumblr.com)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/ArdenPowell)


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